@ARL I was trying to convey a message that there are certain restrictions which may cause issues, but this is very important piece of infrastructure enabled by blockchain technology
Getting in touch with @brantlymillegan is just fine, thats what he does, if that situation can be fixed Iām certain that he will be super happy
I personally think that any deviation from the current workflow will amount to censorship, howsoever trivial it may be to implement. It is effectively not for ENS to judge/decide what qualifies as squatting and what doesnāt, apart from whatever the legal system in place can implement with respect to trademark regulations, OR, a hard-fork (not happening unless there are 1000s of claimants against TNL, Ethereum Foundation at least with a lawsuit ready to go). It is really that simple: you can force a change only with a binding trademark registration at the very least aka owning a mydomain.com domain doesnāt amount to ownership of the āmydomainā trademark. Other than that, unless you can negotiate with the domain owner, I do not see how anything can be changed irrespective of how legitimate your case might be.
Our brand is registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) with us as the owner (I just found this out by Googling my business name and then looking up a registry but can confirm the info held there is in line w/ what I would expect, e.g. the external counsel we interact with is correctly listed).
The Classes associated with the trademark would arguably make most crypto operations a breach of such trademark, i.e. we own the usage for most technical contexts.
Just to confirm, this is not some weird flex - just looking to confirm we have a valid reason as a business to want to own this name.
The .com namespace is incredibly crowded. āReservingā every .com domain would deny people from registering vast parts of the .eth namespace that have no connection to trademark infringement whatsoever, and allowing .com owners the right to take the domain when it expires would provide an avenue for people to obtain any .eth name they want against its current ownerās will.
For a concrete example: should the owner of wallet.eth be prohibited from renewing it, and have to give it up to the owner of wallet.com if they want it when it expires?
Iām not a legal expert but reviewing the āclassesā defined in a given trademark there appears to be defined applications/ownership; the thing is that these awarding bodies are less likely to give out trademarks to such things as theyāre not unique - so this would be open to dispute (legally or otherwise). Itās similar to why no one will copywrite any software seeing as code is so open.
Hereās an example: BBC, A World Intellectual Property Organization Trademark of The British Broadcasting Corporation. Application Number: 918771 :: Trademark Elite Trademarks
Furthermore, where there was a legitimate operating business it would be less of a concern as we have businesses in the US with the same name as one of ours but we also operate in that region. Itās more the case that some joker has bought our .eth domain and then listed for 999 ETH looking to either exploit us, undermine or damage the legitimacy of our operations which in any other context we could use a process to avoid/remove any potential risk as a rights holder.
Itās just a suggestion to ensure this works for established businesses at scale vs. the edge cases that keep being posed. Iām sure every legitimate business doesnāt want to have to pay some unknown amount to a squatter, right?
(As an aside, looks like Google own wallet.com 
)
Hey @ARL , such a nice discussion here. I would like to share some different ideas.
================The Value
The āprotocolā or āsmart contractā on the blockchain is basically an open source program. It means anybody could just simply and legally copy this program, modify and upload the ānew smart contractā into blockchain.
Without ENS, there can be a millions of ādomain name serviceā out there. For example, Solana domain name is also quite popular.
So, the real value is not the ownership of the ENS, but it is that people recognize ENS. If Coinbase or Metamask donāt support ENS, then ENS has less value.
================ The Solution
I think, to make web 3.0 application like ENS work with the traditional world, real world companies might be a better entry point to the solution.
For example, your company can sue Coinbase because Coinbase provides illegal address resolution to the (.eth). Then Coinbase could simply modify the resolution on their side.
Or your company can sue Opensea, because Opensea allows the selling of the (.eth). Then Opensea could simply block the (.eth) from being sold on their platform.
The above is reasonable because the trademark is NOT universal across the earth/universe, even according to laws (and different laws in different country). But, blockchain or decentralized application IS acutally universal.
Interesting in so many ways. Your company does seem to meet the minimum requirements to open a legal dispute if your lawyers were really after the .eth domain 
Right, but following this logic - if every company looks to take legal action against Opensea and Coinbase as a result of ENS then theyāre likely to just block ENS in entirety to remove any legal risk which undermines the entire project? (As Coinbase have done w/ XRP as an example)
I think a legal argument made either way but push favour to listed companies and their lawyers over random squatters. BUT ideally we donāt have to sue anyone and some reasonable solution can be found such as the one Iāve proposed.
Thoughts?
As an aside, our view IS universal - we would take issue irrespective of the network on the basis and classes of our trademark (most likely).
I think if you look at broad picture confrontation of āoldā and ānewā worlds is inevitable.
Some examples - TON vs SEC, Libra vs CEB
what this tell us is that centralised institutions are terrified with what blockchain technology can do
and yet ethereum is alive and growing, there are governments around the world which go much further than in your example āCoinbase blocking single serviceā, some government attempt to block blockchain industry in its entirety, and not only they do not succeed, but end up the within the economically loosing bracket of nations
Its not even about Opensea, there are other marketplaces which are live right now, and some are being built as we speak, and more will come. You will end up in perpetual legal action.
That being said I think ENS as it is already made a huge step towards DNS by providing a choice to users, to have your source of truth run by DNS registar, or pick .eth name and control it with your private key. Most projects donāt care about such implications at all. ENS is taking steps to be tightly integrated with current DNS global namespace, avoid name collision and fit very organically into existing system.
Should current system governing .eth suffix gets broken, then ENS would loose its purpose.
There is also system of delegates in place. Iām not one of the largest Delegates within ENS governance system, not in the top 10 anyway, but if anything of the sort threatening stability of ENS would be proposed, I would vote strictly NO, on this.
Please consider, there doesnāt have to be individual legal battles - platforms open themselves up to class action lawsuits and these could cripple newly forming propositions (as they wonāt have the same cashflow available).
Yet, this is not desired, I could have not come here and just served some legal notice instead - I would hope that as ENS has seen sense with authenticating with DNS that this would naturally extend into the wider proposition (when the current contracts lapse). It makes the merge with existing architectures more tenable.
I guess itās a question of losing purpose with random squatters vs. gaining purpose with respectable businesses.
Whoād you sue exactly? Users, contributors, nodes, or the miners?
And based on what? Blockchain is a mutual agreement based on certain principles, the most important being the freedom. You canāt stop it. You canāt censor it. And you canāt control it.
Truely democratic.
It became so widely used exactly for the fact that no one can unilateraly control it, and should stay that way.
Itās also worth considering that a for-profit newspaper launching a lawsuit against a small non-profit Web3 DAO community might be a PR disaster. Especially if you succeed, and it ruins the service, or it depletes the community treasury.
From what Iāve seen newspapers are looking to expand their readership to include more and more people from the crypto space in various ways, a lawsuit like this would alienate those readers which includes a wide and growing range of people including celebrities, devs, nft traders, web3 enthusiasts, investors (both retail and institutional*) and many more.
Iāve been surprised to learn through my support requests how diverse our user base is, itās not just tech nerds, itās everything from kids to millionaires to CEOs to stay-at-home moms buying names for their kids as Christmas presents.
Many of which have large Twitter followings. Speaking for myself, Iād make sure to never read or recommend those newspapers again and the internet tends to be quite unforgiving in remembering things like that.
Conversely, Iām more inclined to read newspapers (like TIME) which shows an interest in getting involved in the Web3/Crypto/ENS space.
I think the correct way to put it is
gaining purpose with very wide community craving for censorship resistant instruments vs. loosing purpose with respectable businesses
Iām not a lawyer but I guess anyone making profits from a trademark we hold may be liable.
Based on the fact that we own the trademark rights.
I wouldnāt describe the usage as wide and the squatters will prevent it from reaching this stage as legitimate businesses are likely to hold a view similar to ours, which is that they donāt like someone else owning a comparative address as it opens their users up to being easily scammed.
Another reason why a class action lawsuit would be better; it would just be a big collage of all the companies who own IP and arenāt happy with an .eth address in their name.
Quite a few of us are active in the space in many capacities, so wouldnāt want it to come to this - however not all businesses will be as understanding and ultimately the legal teams may hold a different position.
The reality is that most people in the space now are not our average users as these solutions are still very early stage. Weāre just preparing for if/when web3 solutions hit critical mass. Weāre not trying to cater to small/niche groups of users, we have a large user base weāre trying to service without the risk of them being scammed.
Again, I think this is romanticising what is actually occurring with these squatters. Iāll admit there is an issue if someone buys the .com post .eth minting (e.g. spikewatanabe.com is available to buy); however for businesses who owned .com before .eth was ever a thing then some would argue itās a breach of the rights.
There is no absolutely noway, never ever in the whole world for no reason be it rain of meteorites 
or some lightening 
falling down from the sky - Iām NOT letting go off my Spike, like never, he is mine for all eternity 
Itās my digital identity, my home, and my signature. If anything is signed with Spike, people know that its me period.
NOW, Iām not a lawyer either 
but I did have my share of legal exposure to various situations.
So there is law itself, and its applied depended on its scope and interpretation, in that sense it doesnāt differentiate between DNS domain, or .eth DOMAIN, if the wording fits, then it fits. We are yet to see live case like CO vs .eth holder.
However there is also something called common sense. If you were a corporation operating gas stations, suddenly new highway construction is announced and you as business want to build station on the junction, but someone else already owns that plot of land.
Does the fact you have legitimate business case automatically entitles you to that plot of land owned by someone else?
And if you were not interested back in day, when there was no highway announcement, then why should your claim be honoured now?
Anyone couldāve acquired any name, all information was public and transparent, land was there for the taking.
I did a lot of volunteer support work and people literary refer to their .eth names as āreal estateā.
Like so for example - https://twitter.com/graceclarke/status/1460702543818936326
I donāt suppose you are looking to make an attempt on holy grail of modern economy - private property, do you?
We can use past examples until a certain point, because traditionally verdicts and laws are enforceable, but with blockchain, not so easily if not impossible
Even if you sue the holder, you have to first find him (good luck). And if you find him, thereās no one that can force him (if heās smart) to do anything. And he can always claim that he lost the keys.
And it should stay that way.
But consider also this:
Prices are determined by demand and offer, if your name is unique, youāre the only one interested in it, hardly anyone else. And the squatter can only sell it to you in that case.
So, he cannot arbitrarily set the price, since he can sell it only to you. Itās easier to come to a reasonable agreement once you make this clear.
Common sense in the legal sense is often referred to as reasonability test or reasonable man case law (assuming the case is held in a common law country).
I think in the example you pose you forget to mention that the business wanting to build the new lot does so using the corporations name without telling them. So if you just build a Shell station on the new motorway, which is not actually owned by the corporation you are then subject to the rights they own. Then, to fix the issue you think you can extort Shell to pay you money to fix; when in reality you have illegally used their name. Would a reasonable person know whether the Shell station is associated to the corporation or not? What brand damage could happen if this fake Shell gas station actually skims all the cards of people trying to buy gas? Thus, Shell use their powers take back their name; not the plot, which is not the cause for concern.
On the above example, the new station knew Shell was a corporation because theyāre a known brand which is why youāve used their name which you perceive to be valuable.
The hole real estate argument sounds like legal spin and again would likely fail the reasonable person test in terms of the illustrated motives from the person squatting.
You would target the companies facilitating such as Opensea to the extent where facilitating does not make financial sense. They canāt afford legal cases with every company who owns IP.
Or the potential value to scam our users if we were to establish some operations, which if a user then attempts to verify our wallet on ENS this fake business would be listed alongside. We donāt even sell goods necessarily, I would be more concerned about this if I was a consumer facing retailer, e.g. Hugo Boss (as an example).
As an aside, please donāt take my comments as threatening; Iām just trying to be as honest and direct as possible - Iād rather talk more about a potential solution than a potential legal case but you guys seem more interested in the latter point.
Yes, Opensea or Coinbase might just block ENS entirely.
But Metamask can still support ENS, because Metamask is open source. Any one can make a copy and build their own wallet supporting ENS.
The rule from the old world can only rule in the old world (i.e. the trademark can only be used against companies like Coinbase or Opensea). And these rules might not work in the blockchain world.
I have two other ideas here, in different perspectives
======
Following the ideologies of Web3, the company can participate the governance of the DAO, just like any other individuals. Coinbase.eth is actually an active voter on https://snapshot.org/
So, your company could buy ENS tokens and propose proposals in the community. This could initiate the voting process and hopefully it could pass.
=====
This issue might be better to be taken as marketing or PR issue, instead of legal. Looks like your company is paying attention to the Web3 space, otherwise it might not even know ENS.
By buying the .eth domain, the company could highlight the effort to step into Web3. The ā100+ year old news brandā surely knows how to spread the good vibe
I think there are many ways to put some pressure on the seller and negotiate a reasonable price for your company.
Because of the decentralization of ENS, the hurdle of your suit, class action or otherwise, is that you need to prove harm (i.e., damages), so absent commercial exploitation of your trademark that causes confusion in āyour marketplace,ā there is no remedy to be awarded. Further, establishing a courtās jurisdiction over the subject matter and person who owns the domain name may not be so easy.
Your best course of action is to negotiate with the owner over the price of the domain name.